Sadly, I expect that that 'new science' might be conditioned upon the tools we can create at that future time. I think Penn's assertion is most based upon the 'belief' in an 'absolute truth' behind appearence(s) in the 'universe' around us. Sadly, we are stuck with the present human experiment, not not able to rerun it from initial conditions, or 'new' conditions.

Should our present culture fail, technology as we know it die, education systems collapse, and the web of human knowledge break via fungi and worms, will thoughs future 'humans' find the same things we did, or will their 'reality' offer very different considerations/freedoms? We might not be able to 'know' this!

Sorry Penn but you just can't disprove a negative. Just be honest and say you don't believe. There is no evidence of this "simple truth".

In my view gnosticism of any form is just being intellectually dishonest. You don't have evidence to say that god doesn't exist, and therefore you don't actually know that god doesn't exist. I know that the burden of proof states that the burden is on the one who makes a positive claim. Nevertheless this is still a baseless claim. Please don't make the same mistakes as the theists.

It is much better to just say "there is no evidence, don't believe it, I'm not persuaded". Thats the honest answer

Simon, any statement of 'logical or factual uselessness' from you is irrelevant in this discussion. Penn is inaccurate in his statement in that he fails to point out that the entire concept of 'god(s)' is meaningless - so making a positive statement regarding the nonexistence of bullshit falls short. In the end, however, god claims are just bullshit, through and through. Come up with a new god claim and perhaps someone will waste their time showing you why it is bullshit.

Should our present culture fail, technology as we know it die, education systems collapse, and the web of human knowledge break via fungi and worms, will thoughs future 'humans' find the same things we did, or will their 'reality' offer very different considerations/freedoms? We might not be able to 'know' this!

While they may find different ways of measuring things, and may even find things that we missed by not exploring certain technologies, The simple truths that he speaks of are things like gravity, physics, basic mathematics, stuff that exists in nature, and stay fixed in nature. Thor, or Zeus, or Yaweh may make the lighting, but solid objects will always fall toward the center of the earth, matter will always collide with other matter, and one plus one will always equal two. Every civilization ever on the planet knew these things because they were obvious and just there.

In my view gnosticism of any form is just being intellectually dishonest. You don't have evidence to say that god doesn't exist, and therefore you don't actually know that god doesn't exist. I know that the burden of proof states that the burden is on the one who makes a positive claim. Nevertheless this is still a baseless claim. Please don't make the same mistakes as the theists.

In an absolutist sense, you're right, but we try not to think in absolutist terms. A god (singular) is usually endowed with a certain set of traits or things that they control. As science progresses, it gradually finds explanations for these things that this particular god controls. Creation, on a grand scale is explained by the Big Bang, and on an individual scale by the Higgs Boson. Meterology explains the weather, physics, the movement of everything, psychology, the movement (for lack of a better term) of the mind, biology, the function of the body, geology, the properties of the Earth, Ecology, the functions of the environment, etc. There is a field of science that explains just about everything in this world except what happens to consciousness before birth and after death. Who's to say that one day we won't figure out a definitive "non-god" explanation for that too.

To me, agnosticism is really just fence sitting and refusing to make a choice. There's nothing wrong with that, and it's true that we may never know the absolute first cause of everything, but it's really not important. Enough things are explained, in detail, and freely available to those who are willing to inspect it, to really rule out god almost all together. To put it into Pascal's court, the odds are that there is no god.

There may actually be god(s) however there is little doubt that these gods are not formed in the Christian sense and especially not in the Christian picture of a god. The Christian or Muslim god or any other religious deity is far too simple. These gods are little more than hopefulness that wishes to contain the fears of the unknown or unexplained, and especially the church implanted fears of death and the promise of a heaven over a hell for following a supposed auspicious but weirdly mysterious and nonsensical path through life.

If there is an actual god--a physical god--it is the effects of pure energy, matter and anti-matter, or E=MC squared as explained by Einstein's equation concerning matter and energy as it relates to the theoretical creation of the universe--the big bang (or multiple big bangs). In that famous equation, pure energy--which can be as small as one atom--created all matter in our universe in one immense explosion.

That was the actual beginning of evolution as hydrogen and lithium atoms formed initially and began the chain of time, gravity, and molecular creation that eventually formed into our earth about four billion years ago through gravitational attraction.

Considering Penn Jillette's statement to mean 'at the creation of earth again', he is correct. Some religious nonsense would form in the sentient mind to explain the mysteries of creation and end of life. Obviously these would initially be some sort of religion. However, as our minds and intelligence develop there will be scientists who will ferret out more concrete realities than the continuation of fear based religion, and science will slowly be born again.

As far as religion goes, as Penn correctly states, it will not be the same nonsense as the current religious mumbo jumbo, but something different used to explain the processes that cannot be known--those mysteries of birth and the fears of death through the protection of some invisible or unmovable deity. This is easily proven in the simple fact that there were roughly fifty seven thousand religions before the current ones and several thousand religions currently (counting, of course, the minor religions as well) each with different philosophies.

The number of differing religious philosophy is justified by the Christian Ministries current publication where they admit that there are 43,000 independent Christian Churches today who do not wish to follow the basic Christian philosophy. By the way, that number is growing rapidly as the Christian Ministries also reports that there were only 38,000 only three years ago. There is great diversity among religions and that separatist movement continues to evolve.

From old nonsense to new nonsense--all fear based and church controlled--flying in the face of physical (empirical) science.

@Nerdy Keith and Simon Paynton: Here is a brief explanation of why you are wrong. Theists not only have the burden of proof (because religion is non-falsifiable), they also have the burden of production--meaning that they have to produce some evidence before atheists have to produce any evidence at all. The lack of evidence for this extraordinary proposition meets whatever burden of proof atheists have.